Asian wrestling: Sarita Mor, Sushma Shokeen win bronze for India

Ulaanbaatar: Indian wrestlers Sarita Mor and Sushma Shokeen won bronze medals in their respective women's freestyle weight categories at the 2022 Asian Wrestling Championships, here on Thursday.

The 27-year-old Mor won two of her four group matches in the 59kg division to finish third in the field of five wrestlers. She lost to eventual gold medallist Sara Natami of Japan via technical superiority and suffered a narrow 1-2 loss to three-time World Championship medallist Shoovdor Baatarjav of Mongolia in her first two matches.

However, Mor bounced back to defeat Dilfuza Aimbetova of Uzbekistan via technical superiority and Diana Kayumova of Kazakhstan 5-2 to take bronze.

On the other hand, Sushma Shokeen's 55kg category was also competed in the Nordic round system (each wrestler facing others in a round-robin format) as the field was less than six wrestlers.

Sushma lost her matches to Umi Imai of Japan and Otgonjargal Ganbaatar of Mongolia via technical superiority. However, the Indian grappler blanked Altyn Shagayeva from Kazakhstan 5-0 and Uzbekistan's Sarbinaz Jienbaeva 12-0 to finish third in the group of five.

The remaining three Indian women wrestlers -- Manisha (50kg), Sonika Hooda (68kg) and Sudesh Kumari (76kg) - in action on Thursday failed to win medals.

India currently has seven bronze medals in the ongoing tournament. Indian Greco-Roman wrestlers -- Sunil Kumar (87kg), Arjun Halakurki (55kg) Neeraj (63kg), Harpreet Singh (82kg) and Sachin Sahrawat (67kg) -- had won medals in the first two days of the continental meet.

Indian women's freestyle wrestlers competing in the 53kg, 57kg, 62kg, 65kg and 72kg weight divisions will be in action on Friday while men's freestyle wrestlers, including Tokyo Olympic medallists Ravi Kumar Dahiya and Bajrang Punia, will take the mat on Saturday.